Back from Nashville

As you all probably guessed, I returned to New Hampshire from Nashville, TN very very very early this morning. Of course, only in New Hampshire, outside the airport looked like it just had rained and it felt like it was 40 degrees.

It was an eventful trip home and could have been even more eventful if it wasn’t for one decision that later on proved to be perfect.

After we had one last meal in Nashville (Joe’s Crab Shack is excellent I might add), we said our goodbyes to my cousin Erich and my brother Justin. Then my parents, my brother Danny, and I started to walk back to the hotel.

On the way to the hotel, my dad came up with the suggestion of taking the earlier 2:30pm CST shuttle instead of waiting for the 3:30pm CST shuttle that we originally planned. The reason was quite simple: we had nothing left to do in Nashville and we wanted to check out the airport a little more.

Talk about the right decision. We got to the airport and went to check in at the Delta counter. They had these self-checkin computers, so we went to one of those. My dad scanned the tickets in and waited…

…and to our surprise, an error came up on the screen saying there was a problem and talk to a Delta representative.

After a collective groan, we headed to the desk and talked with someone. After a few minutes of typing in the computer and the guy saying “Oh, I remember calling your house earlier today, you will have several messages on your machine” (always a bad sign when the parents haven’t checked the answering machine), we found out our flight to Atlanta had been canceled.

We lucked out though. Somehow this Delta representative was able to get us on an earlier flight to Atlanta (4pm CST instead of the original 5pm CST) despite the flight supposedly being full. If we had come in at our original planned time, we would have missed the earlier flight and would have been in big trouble (more on that later…).

So that flight to Atlanta was short (1 hour) and uneventful. We arrived fine at Atlanta and found out what gate to head to for our connecting flight (which while we are on the subject, why are we going south so we can go north to NH?). The first of several oddities came up:

Me: “Mom, it says our Delta flight is a partnership with Air France.”Mom: “This could be an interesting trip.”

We went to T.G.I. Friday’s for dinner (I highly recommend the Friday’s Club by the way), had a wonderful meal, and then we went to our gate.

We dropped our bags off there, then Danny and I went to do some exploring (we had a hour before our flight). Of course, we get halfway down the concourse and we get a frantic call from Dad saying that our gate had been switched from B33 to B3 with less then 45 minutes left before the flight.. Guess they couldn’t make it B20 or B18. No it had to be B3 . Of course this meant walking back to B33, getting our stuff, and running across the terminal to B3.

We get to B3 and await our flight. I noticed on the HD screens (by the way Atlanta, the addition of HD screens for every gate was a great choice…they provide a ton of information) that our boarding time was 8:48 pm EST. All is good.

Apparently the flight attendents were on their way and the flight was only delayed 15 mintues.

The flight itself was uneventful and very relaxing actually. Did I mention that Guster’s Lost and Gone Forever is probably my favorite CD from the late 90s? What a masterpiece.

We got in around 12:00am EST, although by the time we got our luggage, found my Dad’s car, actually found an exit out of the long term parking instead of doing circles, and got to my apartment, it had reached 1:00am EST. Katie was a tad tired waiting up for me.

What a trip. I got maybe 4 hours of sleep last night (oops, I mean this morning). Long day at work, and we had to get grocheries this evening.

Finally though I can relax. I think I am going to go to bed early tonight.